Combined short range radio network and cellular telephone network for interpersonal communications

ABSTRACT

Portable communication devices, such as Bluetooth enabled cellular phones, communicate with and identify like devices that are nearby, and send notification messages to a remote server. When a notification message is received at the server identifying two devices that have come within range of one another, the server compares the profile data associated with each of the two identified devices and facilitates communications between the devices when appropriate.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

This application is a Non-Provisional of, and claims the benefit of thefiling date of, U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 60/568,482filed May 6, 2004, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein byreference.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This invention relates to systems for facilitating direct communicationsbetween consenting persons having similar interests.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In its preferred form, the present invention employs body-worn personalnetworking devices, such as Bluetooth enabled cellular phones, that areable to communicate with and identify other such devices that arenearby. When a device is within range of another such device, itidentifies itself with unique identification value, such as a Bluetoothdevice address value.

Each cellular phone keeps a log of other devices that have beenpreviously detected and, whenever a new device comes within range, anotification message is transmitted to a remote server via thelong-range cellular phone network. The notification message contains anidentification of both the requesting device and the nearby device whosepresence has been detected. It may also include one or more valuesindicating the operating mode of the requesting device, e.g., a silentmode, an invisible mode, a meeting mode, etc. In addition, thetransmitted indication preferably includes a value which indicates theuser's willingness to receive alert messages from the server when newdevices come within range.

Profile data that describes each device and its owner is stored in adatabase. When a notification message is received identifying twodevices that have come within range of one another, the server fetchesthe profile data associated with each of the two identified devices andperforms a comparison. The comparison generates a calculated valueindicating the extent to which the two profiles match. This comparisonoperation may use different weighting schemes depending on the mode ofthe requesting device to determine the type of interaction to enable.

If the calculated value indicating the extent to which the two profilesmatch exceeds a threshold value currently associated with a givendevice, an alert message is transmitted to that device. The user of eachdevice may alter the mode and threshold values to change the behavior ofthe device.

The alert message sent to each device from the server may containinformation describing the nearby device to the extent the owner of thatdevice has consented to its being revealed. Each person supplyingprofile information can supply preference values indicating the extentto which provided information is shared, and each person can provide athreshold value indicating the extent to which the profile of a detectednearby device must match the interests of the requestor before an alertmessage is to be sent. The alert message may include informationidentifying an encountered device or its owner, such as name, address orother contact information, a photograph or other descriptive image,demographic data, data indicating the interests of the owner of thedevice, or any other information which is of use in a specificapplication to identify, or promote communications between, nearbydevices and their owners.

The present invention can exploit the growing availability of portablewireless electronic devices that incorporate Bluetooth transceivers thatcan be used as beacons to identify a device to other nearby devices.Such personal beacon systems offer better short range spatial resolutionfor proximity detection than do absolute location systems, such as GPSand cellular phone location systems. The fact that the beacons transmitonly device identification codes avoids some privacy problems sincethese codes do not contain information about the users. Moreover, thedetection and introduction service contemplated by the present inventioncan also be used in poor reception areas, where only asynchronouscommunications such as SMS (Short Message Service) function properly.

The storage of profile data, the performance of matching functions,message transmission, and other functions at a shared central serveroffers several advantages over systems which rely on the portabledevices themselves for storing and sharing information. The performanceof functions using a centralized infrastructure reduces thecomputational burden and consequent power consumption to which thebattery powered portable devices are subjected. The centralizedstructure can be more easily updated and is capable of performing moresophisticated comparison and notification functions using more completedata. The robust capabilities of web servers, applications servers anddatabase servers may be used to advantage to provide better performancefrom the individual devices, as well as functions such as improvedprivacy protection, profile editing, report generation, data analysisand system management functions not possible using the limitedcapabilities of the portable devices alone.

The preferred embodiment of the present invention described in moredetail below uses personal area wireless network devices such asBluetooth transceivers to identify social proximity and a large areawireless network such as a cellular phone network and/or the Internet,to permit interest matching functions to be performed at a remotecentral server and to instigate person-to-person interactions betweenselected devices that are near to each other and/or between their users.

The preferred embodiment of the invention contemplates the use ofbody-worn personal area wireless devices interconnected with a server bya long-range network to map social networks and social network dynamics.This enables verification and automatic augmentation of the links inexisting social network applications such as Tacit.com, friendster.comand Match.com which are already in widespread use. These rapidly growingInternet based applications currently suffer from a problem that theyobtain their data from users who enter that data at the keyboards ofconnected PCs, but they lack the ability to (1) add links automatically,and (2) verify that the links are based on a selection criteria that isuseful to service users. The present invention supplies that need byproviding an automatic mechanism for establishing and verifying linksautomatically between people who are physically near to one another.

In accordance with a feature of the preferred embodiment of theinvention, service users can also associate weighting values with theinformation about themselves and others, and use these weighting valuesto specify the information's importance to be assigned to different datawhen calculating a similarity metric. The similarity score is calculatedby extracting the commonalities between two users' profiles and summedusing the user-defined weighting values. If the similarity score isabove the threshold set by one or both users, the server alerts theusers that there is someone in their proximity that they would like tomeet. The thresholds and the weighting scheme that defines thesimilarity metric can be specified using a web interface and can bereset as needed using a cellular phone. The user can also vary the modeof operation of the cellular phone to control the frequency and contentof the alert messages that are transmitted by the server when differentdevices come within range of one another.

These and other features, advantages and potential applications of thepresent invention will be better understood by considering the followingdetailed description.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In the detailed description which follows, frequent reference will bemade to the attached drawings, in which:

FIGS. 1 a, 1 b, and 1 c illustrate cellular phone screen displaysproduced in the course of operating an illustrative preferred embodimentof the invention; and

FIG. 2 is a block diagram that illustrates the principal components of asystem that implements the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION Portable Device Operation

In the illustrative embodiment of the invention described in detailbelow, people who use the system are provided with cellular telephoneswhich incorporate short range radio transceivers that use the Bluetoothprotocol to detect other nearby Bluetooth enabled devices.

Each of these Bluetooth enabled cellular phones includes a processorthat is specially programmed with an application program, called“BlueAware,” that enable the cellular phone to identify and log thepresence of other “discoverable” Bluetooth devices that are nearby, andto display an identification of those devices on the cell phone's screenas illustrated in FIG. 1 a.

Each of these cellular phones is further programmed to generate anotification message identifying itself, and other Bluetooth devicesthat come within its range, as well as additional status information.The application program that executes on the cellular phone processorthen transmits that notification message via the long-range cellularnetwork to a remote central server. The remote server processes theseincoming notification messages by consulting a database of profileinformation about each participating device and its owner (as usedherein, the term “owner” is used to refer to the person who uses thedevice and who supplies profile information about themselves to thecentral server.) When the remote server receives a notification messageindicating that two identified devices are within Bluetooth range of oneanother, and further determines that the profile data associated withthese two devices satisfies a specified matching criteria, the remoteserver sends an alert message to one or both of the two identifiednearby devices.

As illustrated by FIG. 1 b, the alert message may advantageously includea picture of the owner of the matching nearby device that is displayedon the cellular phone's screen after the alert message is received,facilitating a personal contact between the two nearby device owners. Inaddition, as illustrated in FIG. 1 c, the alert message may includedisplayable data indicating common interests of the two nearby users.

FIG. 2 shows the operation of the overall system. A first individual 203carries a first Bluetooth phone which detects a second Bluetooth phonecarried by a second individual 205. The BlueAware application programthat executes on the Bluetooth phone carried by the first person 203 idillustrated in simplified form within the dashed-line rectangle 210 inFIG. 2. As seen at 211, when the presence of a nearby device isdetected, its Bluetooth device ID (a unique 48 bit Bluetooth deviceaddress value assigned to and stored on each device) is compared withthe Bluetooth ID's previously stored in a Devices Log data structureseen at 214 maintained by the BlueAware program.

If it is determined at 216 that a detected nearby device has newly comewithin range and not currently identified in the Devices Long 214, itsBluetooth ID is posted at 217 as a new Devices Log entry and a requestmessage is sent as indicated at 218 to a remote server, seen at 220 inFIG. 2, via the cellular phone network 222. The time at which the newdevice was detected is recorded as seen at 223 in a Logtime Log 240which holds a device identification number (from the Devices Log) and atime stamp value. If the detected device is already recorded in theDevices log 214, a timestamp indicating the time of detection isrecorded in the Logtime Log 240, along with the device number assignedto that device in the Device Log 214.

Using the mechanism described above, a sequence of timestamp values maybe recorded for each device encountered, and the BlueAware applicationmay process this data to determine whether the detection of a givendevice warrants the transmission of a notification message to theserver. To conserve memory space, the BlueAware application mayperiodically remove identification and timestamp data for devices whichhave been out of range for an extended time.

Thus, the proximity log is split into two files, the Devices Log 214listing ID values (device addresses and device names) and the Logtimelog 240 listing timestamps. The Devices Log 214 indexes every deviceencountered by the phone. The individual encounters are timestamped andlinked to the indexed number of the device in the Logtime log 240.Simply assigning a single number to each device eliminates the need tolog the BTID and device name after each encounter. This method was shownto dramatically lower the size of the proximity log. Example data of thekind that might be recorded in the two proximity logs is listed in Table1, below.

TABLE 1 Logging information format BTdevices.log   0 [name] KIT-KAT[addr] 00e09885e388   1 [name] BARAHONA-IBM [addr] 0050f2e17654   2[name] Nokia3650 [addr] 0060573c1c4e   3 [name] NORTHOLT [addr]000d888ea558 BTlogtime.log   0 <2004/2/29 12:59:54>   1 <2004/2/2912:59:54>   2 <2004/2/29 12:59:54>   3 <2004/2/29 12:59:54>

Continually scanning and logging the environment for BTIDs can expend anolder mobile phone battery in about 18 hours. While continuous scansprovide a rich depiction of a user's dynamic environment, mostindividuals are used to having phones with standby times exceeding 48hours. Therefore, the BlueAware application program that executes oneach cellular phone scans the environment once each minute to reducebattery consumption.

Bluetooth Identification of Nearby Devices

Bluetooth transceivers that are typically built into a single microchipand operate within a globally available frequency band. Detailedinformation on the structure and function of devices conforming to theBluetooth protocol can be found at www.bluetooth.org. Programmablecellular phones are also widely available that incorporate programmableprocessors which execute the Symbian Operating System. The Symbian OS isthe global industry standard operating system for smartphones, and islicensed to the world's leading handset manufacturers, which account forover 80 percent of annual worldwide mobile phone sales. The Symbian OSis available from Symbian Software, Bridge Park Center, 390 BridgeParkway, Redwood Shores, Calif. 94065. Cellular phones incorporatingBluetooth transceivers and using the Symbian OS are currently availablefrom many cellular phone manufacturers, including Nokia, Motorola, SonyErickson, Panasonic and Lenovo, and are in widespread use.

The application program (here called “BlueAware”) that runs on eachcellular phone can be downloaded from a server operated by the serviceprovider via the cellular network, or may be transferred via theBluetooth link or an infrared link from a friend's device, or from adevice provided at an entryway to an event, such as the registrationdesk of a tradeshow. After the BlueAware software has been newlyinstalled on a give device, it can automatically register itself withthe remote server, transferring its Bluetooth device address and devicename to the server, and creating a profile data template which can thenbe populated with data by the device owner using the cellular phone orusing a PC as illustrated by the PC 290 seen in FIG. 2 which isconnected to the server via the Internet 295.

The Bluetooth specification defines two power levels: a lower power modewith a range of about 10 meters for covering a personal area within aroom, and a higher power level with a range of about 100 meters coveringa larger area, such as a home or office. Software controls and identitycoding built into each microchip ensure that only those units preset bytheir owners can communicate, and provide a mechanism for identifyingother devices that are within range. In a crowded room, the effectiverange of Bluetooth low power transmission may decrease substantiallyfrom the nominal 10 meter range—but reduced range in a crowded room canfrequently be beneficial.

Bluetooth devices are identified by a unique identification code values.Each Bluetooth device is specified by a unique 48-bit Bluetooth DeviceAddress (BD_ADDR), which is typically displayed as 12 hexadecimal digitsas seen in Table 1 above. Each Bluetooth device further stores and canreveal a “user friendly” displayable Bluetooth Device Name which can beup to 248 bytes long, although external devices are not expected to beable to handle or display more than 40 characters. Still further, eachdevice is assigned a Bluetooth passkey (Bluetooth PIN) which is used toauthenticate two Bluetooth devices (that have not previously exchangedlink keys) to each other and create a trusted relationship between them.

Bluetooth devices are further specified by a Class of device parameterreceived during the device discovery procedure and indicating the typeof device and the types of service that are supported. The informationwithin the Class of Device parameter is referred to as ‘Bluetooth DeviceClass’ (i.e. the major and minor device class fields) and ‘BluetoothService Type’ (i.e. the service class field).

Bluetooth devices are capable of performing an inquiry function todetermine the identity and Device Class of other “discoverable”Bluetooth devices which are in range. With respect to inquiry, aBluetooth device shall be either in non-discoverable mode or in adiscoverable mode; that is, the device shall be in one, and only one,discoverability mode at a time. The two discoverable modes are calledlimited discoverable mode and general discoverable mode. When aBluetooth device is in non-discoverable mode it does not respond toinquiry. A Bluetooth device is said to be made discoverable, or set intoa discoverable mode, when it is in limited discoverable mode or ingeneral discoverable mode. Even when a Bluetooth device is madediscoverable it may be unable to respond to inquiry due to otherbaseband activity. A Bluetooth device that does not respond to inquiryfor any of these two reasons is called a silent device.

Bluetooth devices are capable of performing different types of inquiriescalled (1) a general inquiry, (2) a limited inquiry, (3) a name inquiry,(4) device discovery, and (5) bonding. The purpose of the generalinquiry procedure is to provide the initiator with the Bluetooth deviceaddress, clock, Class of Device and used page scan mode of generaldiscoverable devices (i.e. devices that are in range with regard to theinitiator and are set to scan for inquiry messages with the GeneralInquiry Access Code) Also device in limited discoverable mode will bediscovered using general inquiry. The general inquiry is intended to beused by devices that need to discover devices that are made discoverablecontinuously or for no specific condition.

The purpose of the limited inquiry procedure is to provide the initiatorwith the Bluetooth device address, clock, Class of Device and used pagescan mode of limited discoverable devices. The latter devices aredevices that are in range with regard to the initiator, and may be setto scan for inquiry messages with the Limited Inquiry Access Code, inaddition to scanning for inquiry messages with the General InquiryAccess Code. The limited inquiry is intended for use by devices thatneed to discover devices that are made discoverable only for a limitedperiod of time, during temporary conditions or for a specific event.

The purpose of name discovery is to provide the initiator with theBluetooth Device Name of connectable devices (i.e. devices in range thatwill respond to paging). A Name request is the procedure for retrievingthe Bluetooth Device Name from a connectable Bluetooth device. It is notnecessary to perform the full link establishment procedure in order tojust to get the name of another device. In the name request procedure,the initiator will use the Device Access Code of the remote device asretrieved immediately beforehand, normally through an inquiry procedure.

The purpose of device discovery is to provide the initiator with theBluetooth Address, Address, clock, Class of Device, used page scan modeand Bluetooth device name of discoverable devices. During the devicediscovery procedure, first an inquiry (either general or limited) isperformed, and then name discovery is done towards some or all of thedevices that responded to the inquiry.

A Bluetooth enabled cellular phone programmed with the BlueAwareapplication identifies and stores the device addresses and the devicenames in the devices log seen at 214 and can display a listing of therecently identified nearby devices as seen in FIG. 1 a. The content ofthe devices log is further illustrated above in Table 1.

The preferred Bluetooth enabled cellular phone is also capable ofexchanging data with a remotely located server via the cellular networkusing GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), a standard for wirelesscommunications which runs at speeds up to 115 kilobits per second,compared with current GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications)systems' 9.6 kilobits. GPRS supports a wide range of bandwidths, makesefficient use of limited bandwidth, and is particularly suited forsending and receiving small bursts of data, such as e-mail and Webbrowsing, and for transmitting the notification and alert messagesemployed by the present invention.

A Bluetooth enabled cellular phone or other wireless device connects tothe server using GPRS by transmitting a notification message containingthat devices Bluetooth device address, the Bluetooth device address of anearby discovered device, and a mode/threshold value. For example, thedevice might submit the request:

http://18.85.44.254/serendipity/php/px.php?myBTID=BTID&myThres=Thres&rBTID=rBTID

where BTID and rBTID are expressed as the 12 hexadecimal digitsrepresenting the 48 bit Bluetooth device address values of therequesting device and the recognized device respectively.

The server may, by way of example, execute a specified perl script thatexecutes on an application server and takes the BTID and thresholdvariables received from the phones and connects to a MySQL database tofetch and compare the profile data associated with the two devices,yielding a calculated similarity score between the two users. If thisscore is above one or both users' thresholds, the script returns thecommonalities as well as additional contact information (at each user'sdiscretion) back to the phones.

For many applications, the phones will need to connect via the GPRSnetwork. Unfortunately, in locations such as within many large building,GPRS signals cannot be relied on. To ensure connectivity, the servicemay provide Bluetooth access points which connect the devices to theGPRS network. In other situations, notification and alert messages maybe sent using the SMS (Short Message Service) available on digital GSMnetworks to allowing text messages of up to 160 characters to be sentand received. If the phone is powered off or out of range, SMS messagesare stored in the network and are delivered at the next opportunity.

Server Operations

The functions performed at the remote server 220 are illustrated withinthe dashed-line rectangle 250 in FIG. 2.

Participating Bluetooth device users provide profile information alongwith the Bluetooth identification values (BTIDs) to populate a profiledatabase illustrated at 260 in FIG. 2. The data in the profile databasemay be entered using an HTML forms-based procedure Using an assigneduser name and password, a user accesses a secure web site which providesa forms based interface for entering and editing profile information thedescribes a Bluetooth enabled cellular phone (typically including itscellular phone number and its 48 bit Bluetooth device address). The formalso enables the user to enter descriptive information about the deviceuser, including a photograph (typically a .jpg image file uploaded tothe server), as well as bibliographic data about the user (e.g., name,address, gender, schools attended, and occupation). In addition, theuser specifies a set of interests. Preferably, the interests areselected from a hierarchically organized collection of predeterminedinterest categories so that the interests of different people may bemore easily matched. When a user wishes to specify an unlisted category,he or she may do so, and an editor may periodically review these newcategories and, when appropriate, add them to the organized collection.

As shown in FIG. 2, the user may use an available personal computer 290connected to a web server via the Internet 295 to populate the profiledatabase. As will be understood, the functions performed by the remoteserver may be performed by a plurality of different server processeswhich execute on one or several different computes and would typicallyinclude a web server, an application server and a database server. Theremote server may also advantageously provide a WAP (WirelessApplication Protocol) interface that allows the users of cellular phonesand other wireless devices to easily and instantly access and interactwith information and services provided by the server.

The user may also associate a “level of interest” weighting value thatcan be used in a matchmaking process performed by the server to betteridentify other participants with whom direct communications are likelyto be rewarding. A user named “Martin Semoury” may associate a lowweight value to the data indicating his birthday, but assign a highweight to the name of his college, thereby indicating that he wishes toknow when people who also attended Stanford are nearby, regardless oftheir age.

A user may enter a threshold value that indicates how high thecalculated similarity score should be before the server is to send analert message to that user. Martin Semoury may enter a low thresholdvalue of 1, indicating that he desires to receive alert messages evenwhen the profile analysis performed by the server suggests that the userof a detected nearby device has few common interests. The thresholdvalue may be, and commonly is, dynamically reset by the individual user,depending on the users changing circumstances. As illustrated at 270 inFIG. 2, each notification message sent from a device to the serverincludes not only its own ID value (the Requester ID) and the ID valueof the newly arrived other device (the Identified ID), but also aThreshold value indicating the current willingness of the requestor toreceive notification messages. By transmitting a threshold value ofzero, a user indicates that the user desires to receive an alert for allnewly arriving devices. By transmitting a maximum threshold value, auser may inform the server that no alert messages are to be sent to thatuser until a lower threshold value is sent.

Each time a requesting device sends a notification message to theserver, its current threshold value is reset. This last entered valuemay be used to determine whether or not to send an alert message whenanother device sends a notification message indicating the proximity oftwo devices. When the server calculates a server score, it is comparedwith the currently stored threshold level of each identified device todetermine whether or not to send an alert message to that identifieddevice.

As shown in FIG. 2 at 260, the profile database contains, for eachBluetooth device: (a) the Bluetooth identification value BTID for thatdevice; (b) a password which is used to authorize subsequent changes tothe profile database; (c) a short name for the device or its user (whichneed not be same name as the “device name” stored in the Bluetoothdevice); (d) contact information such as mailing address, email address,web site URL, fax numbers, and importantly, the cellular phone number ofthe device, etc.; (e) demographic information describing the device oruser, such as age, sex, religion, ethnicity, height, weight, or anyother values which are of use in performing desired matching functions;data describing the “interests” of the device user, which can be usedboth to describe the user and/or to describe the attributes of interestin another participating user; (f) weighting values associated withindividual items of demographic or interest data indicating the level ofimportance that user attached to each category of data; and (f) otherpreference data indicating, for example, the extent to which otherinformation is the profile is sharable, and under what circumstances. Ina given application, only a limited subset of these possible profiledata categories is used, and the kinds of information that will beuseful can be expected to vary significantly from application toapplication. In addition, as noted below, the user can control the kindsof information that are consulted in calculating a similarity score bychanging the mode value associated with the threshold value.

An incoming notification/request message from a participating Bluetoothdevice received by the server 220 as indicated at 275 may consist of theBluetooth identification values of the requesting device and anotherdevice whose proximity was detected, along with a current mode/thresholdvalue which is generally indicative of the requesting user's willingnessto receive alert messages. The two BTID values are used to fetchcorresponding profile data from the database 260 and these profiles arecompared as indicated at 280. The comparison yields a similarity scorevalue indicating the degree of the two profiles match. If the similarityscore value exceeds the thresholds for one or both devices as indicatedby the test at 290, an alert message is sent to one or both devices asindicated at 295.

By way of example, the comparison might sum the weight values therequestor has assigned to matching “interest” entries in the twoprofiles, and if the computed sum exceeds the threshold value providedby the requester in the request message 270, an alert would be issuedfor that requester. The following routine, expressed as a Pascalprocedure, illustrates one way of comparing the profiles of therequesting and identified devices:

Example comparison program  Type     Interest = record      Category:integer;      Weight: integer     end;  var     Requestor_threshold,Identified_threshold: integer;     Requestor_Interests,Identified_interests: array[1..8] of Interest;  procedurecompare_profiles;  var i,j,k: integer;  begin   k:=0;   for i:=1 to 8 doif(requestor_Interests[i].weight > 0) then for j:=1   to 8 do    ifrequestor_Interests[i].category = Identified_interests[j].category   then     inc(k, Requestor_Interests[i].Weight +    Indentified_interests[j].Weight);  k:=normalize(k);  if(requestor_threshold < maxint) and (k > requestor_threshold) then    send_alert(requestor);  if (identified_threshold < maxint) and (k >identified_threshold) then     send_alert(identified); end; {compare_profiles }

In the example program above, the stored profile information for boththe requestor and the identified devices includes the specification ofup to eight interest categories, each of which is specified by aninteger value. Each device further specifies a weight value associatedwith each interest category. The procedure compare profiles forms a sumof the weight values which the requestor and the owner of the identifieddevice have assigned to each matching category. After the weights aresummed, the resulting sum is normalized. Normalization may be performedby dividing the calculated sum by the maximum sum that would be producedif all attributes were matched, and then multiplying the resultingquotient by the largest threshold value (less than maxint) that the usermay enter. The normalization step allows the user to enter a thresholdnumber that indicates an overall willingness to receive alert messageswithout regard to the relative importance assigned to variousattributes.

Each user may request that no alert messages be sent to their device bysetting their threshold value to the maximum value (maxint). Likewise,each user may request that alert messages whenever a new discoverabledevice comes within range by setting their threshold value to zero.Otherwise, alert messages will be sent to a given user's device onlywhen the computed commonality value (k) exceeds the threshold level forthat device. Thus, one, both or neither devices will receive an alertmessage, depending upon the threshold values each has submitted.

Note that each device may update its threshold level each time it sendsa notification message advising the server that a new discoverabledevice has come within range as illustrated by the notification messagerecord seen at 270 in FIG. 2.

The profile data for each user may advantageously include dataspecifying a set of device IDs for devices owned by “friends.” Theserver may then identify persons who are “friends of friends” or“friends of friends of friends”. A given user may then request thatalert messages be sent only when such a “trusted” person having commoninterests is nearby. Moreover, the alert message may contain anidentification of mutual friends, providing an easy way to start aconversation: “So, I guess we both know Alice Green . . . ” Like otherprofile attributes, a user may assign a weight to the “friend list” datato indicate the relative importance that should be assigned to the factthat an encountered person may be a friend of one or more friends.

Each user may also set the extent to which information will be providedto requesters. For example, a user may indicate that interest categoriesmay be revealed to others, but not name and address information. Thedegree to which information is revealed by be varied by transmitting athreshold value which contains not only an indication of the extent towhich profiles should match but which also contains a “mode” value forthe device. The mode value may indicated vary the content of the profiledata which is communicated to others in alert messages or requested fromthe server by a device which has another device's Bluetooth ID in itsdevices log. Thus, a person attending a tradeshow may place his devicein a mode which freely provides name and address information to others,whereas that same person may wish to withhold substantially all profileinformation in a less protected environment, like an airport.

An alert message may contain the cellular phone number of a nearbycellular telephone which is associated with a person having similarinterests. This enables one user to simply call nearby person's cellphone, a feature that can be of particular utility in crowded areas inwhich it may be difficult to identify the other person using a displayedphotograph sent with the alert message.

It may be desirable to suppress the transmission of either notificationmessages or alert messages in certain locations. For example, it mightbe desirable to suppress the generation of alert messages from alldevices that are carried into a theater in which presentation is inprogress. This can be accomplished by placing one or more Bluetooth“suppressor beacon” devices in or around that location. When any deviceis within range of one of the suppressor beacons, it sends its BluetoothID and the beacon's ID to the server. When the server receives anindication from a given device that it is within range of a suppressorbeacon, the server inhibits the transmission of alert messages to thatuser's device until it is again out of range of the suppressor beacon.

Certain trusted devices may have profile information attributes set thatentitle them to receive profile data from the server relating to anearby individual that would not be available to the general public.These devices can act as remote extensions of the server. By way ofexample, the invention might be used to encourage communications betweenattendees and exhibitors at a trade show, and a device at a registrationdesk may be used to automatically obtain bibliographic data from theserver that describes an arriving attendee in order to facilitate theregistration process.

Similarly, it may be desirable to transmit an alert message to userscontaining certain information whenever they come within range of aparticular beacon device. Thus, for example, attendees at a trade showmay receive special instructions or announcements whenever they comewithin range of a greeting beacon near the entrance to the show. In thiscase, the alert message would be sent even though the device holder hadsubmitted a high threshold value to inhibit alert messages when devicescarried by other participants came within Bluetooth range. By equippingphysical infrastructure with embedded computing and a Bluetoothtransceiver, human users can be notified of nearby resources orfacilities, such as an approaching free taxi, or a nearby publicrestroom. Devices might also be carried by mobile platforms withembedded computers (e.g., trucks, buses. For instance, busses could waituntil passengers from other busses had gotten on-board, or deliveryvehicles could more efficiently service pickup/drop-off requests.

Applications

The invention may be used to allow attendees at a particular event whohave common interests to more easily find each other and communicateface-to-face. To that end, the participants at the event may be asked touse a web interface to submit profile data in advance of the event,selecting particular topics of interest from a category list thatidentifies predetermined job or subject categories. For example, adevice carried by an attendee at trade show may specify profile datadesigned to put the attendee in contact with experts in a particularfield. Salesmen can create a public profile to publicize their productsand expertise. Similarly, people attending a gathering of “singles” mayseek a person of the opposite sex of a particular age having commoninterests. A mode indicator value transmitted with the threshold valuemay be used to select different profile data for use in differentsituations. Thus, the same user may supply profile data for use inprofessional encounters, and other profile date for use in socialencounters.

The invention may also be used to provide “situated introductions” whenusers of personal computer based “social software” programs come intodirect contact. By way of example, the profile data already stored insystems such as Friendster.com, Match.com, and the like could beprocessed at a server to enable participants in those services to beintroduced to one another when each is carrying a suitably programmedBluetooth cell phone and comes within range of one another participantin that service. Such services normally require users to be in front ofa computer in order to make new acquaintances, but the present inventionallows these matching applications to be embedded directly into everydaysocial settings: on the bus, around the water cooler, in a bar, at aconference. Using telephone hardware technology that is already widelydeployed, the present invention distinguishes and characterizesindividuals, and thus enables serendipitous social interactions. Ascomputing breaks free of the desktop and firmly roots itself in dailylife, there is an emerging opportunity to mine, mediate, and augmenttoday's social reality.

Bridging social software introduction systems with current mobile phonetechnology enables a diverse suite of applications. Since the neededdevice application software can be readily ported to the majority ofphones today, conference participants can find the right people duringthe event. Large companies interested in facilitating internalcollaboration can use the invention to introduce people who are workingon similar projects, but not within one another's social circles.

Single individuals can more easily and more safely find and meet peopleof potential interest. The growth of online dating has soared overrecent years as the stigma associated with personal ads diminishes. Thepresent invention provides these users an alternative to dyadicencounters with strangers online, as well as approached by strangersabout whom nothing is known. The system allows for a large variation inthe privacy constraints for these applications. Phones can be set ininvisible mode so that they will never be contacted, but they can stillsee other people's ‘public profiles’ and view information indicatingwhat they have in common. A device can also be set to only establishpotential links to others within a ‘trust network’. Users become part ofa trust network when they are within one degree from an individual'ssocial circle, i.e.: a friend-of-a-friend. Trust networks can beexpanded to incorporate several degrees should the user desire. Finally,a user can have the option of setting his or her profile to ‘public’.This will allow other service participants to view this person'sinformation. The public profile can be different from the main profileand can be viewed as a type of proximity webpage.

Being able to infer relationships between people based on proximity andinteraction behaviors will augment a variety of existing services thatcurrently require users to manually quantify existing relationships.Devices can be implemented that are not only aware of each other, butare also infused with a sense of social curiosity. By continuallymonitoring proximity data, the phones and the server which connects themcan begin to learn patterns in an individual's behavior. This enablesinferences to be made regarding whom the user knows and the type ofrelationship between everyone in their social network. Time regularlyspent with an individual typically implies some type of relationshipwith them. The inference drawn as to the relationship type should taketime and location into account. Friday evenings at bar should imply adifferent relationship than Tuesday afternoons in a meeting room. Thus,by processing proximity data, a given user's profile may be furtherpopulated with inferred data, such as one or more automatically createdlists of likely friends and acquaintances that can be used to create atrust network as noted above.

The present invention further contemplates the use of body-worn personalarea wireless networks and mobile phone usage to map the trade-offsbetween face-to-face interactions and telephone interactions. This isuseful for managing companies' meeting spaces and communicationsinfrastructure. An example is automatic verification and updating ofworkgroup membership and automatic configuration of push-to-talk phonenetworking. Currently, considerable expenditures are made using theservices of PwC and the like to analyze a client's internalcommunication structure and recommend changes. Most large organizationssee this category of problem as a primary barrier to success, both forcurrent productivity and for reorganization planning. For PwC andothers, the only way to gather data about face-to-face interactions hasbeen through surveys, which are expensive, infuriating, and famouslyinaccurate. The present invention provides a tool to automaticallycollect accurate data with no additional capital expenditure oradministration cost.

CONCLUSION

It is to be understood that the methods and apparatus which have beendescribed above are merely illustrative applications of the principlesof the invention. Numerous modifications may be made by those skilled inthe art without departing from the true spirit and scope of theinvention.

1. Apparatus for facilitating direct communications between personshaving similar interests comprising, in combination, a long rangecommunications network, a plurality of portable electronic devices, eachgiven one of said portable electronic devices comprising: a short rangeradio transmitter for transmitting a unique identification code valuethat identifies said given one of said devices, a short range radioreceiver capable of detecting and storing received identification codevalues transmitted by other ones of said devices that are nearby, a longrange communications interface coupled to said long range communicationsnetwork comprising: a long range transmitter responsive to the detectionand storage of a newly received identification code value by said shortrange receiver for transmitting a notification message over said longrange communication network, said notification message including saidnewly received identification code value and the unique identificationcode value identifying said given one of said electronic devices, a longrange receiver for receiving an alert message transmitted to said givenone of said portable electronic devices via said long rangecommunication network, and a display screen for displaying informationcontained in said alert message to the user of said given portableelectronic device, and a server connected to a long range communicationnetwork, said server comprising: a database for storing profile datawhich describes each of said devices or one or more users of each ofsaid devices, a message receiver coupled to said long rangecommunications network for receiving one or more notification messagesfrom said devices, a comparator responsive to the reception by saidmessage receiver of a notification message containing identificationcode values identifying first and second nearby ones of said portableelectronic devices for comparing the profile data in said database thatdescribes said first portable electronic device with the profile data insaid database that describes said second portable electronic device toproduce a calculated value indicating the extent to which the profiledata describing said first and second portable electronic devices aresimilar, and a message transmitter coupled to said comparator fortransmitting an alert message via said long range communications networkto said first portable electronic device when said calculated valueexceeds a predetermined threshold value, said alert message containingdisplayable information derived from the profile data in said databasethat describes said second portable electronic device.
 2. Apparatus asset forth in claim 1 wherein said short range radio transmitter and saidshort range radio receiver employ the Bluetooth protocol and said uniqueidentification code is the Bluetooth device address of said given one ofsaid devices.
 3. Apparatus as set forth in claim 1 wherein each givenone of said devices further includes a memory for storing recentlyreceived identification code values and wherein said means fortransmitting one or more notification messages transmits a notificationmessage when an identification code value newly received by saidreceiving means does not match any of said recently receivedidentification code values in said memory.
 4. Apparatus as set forth inclaim 1 wherein one or more of said notification messages contains amode indication value that characterizes the current operating mode ofsaid given one of said devices.
 5. Apparatus as set forth in claim 1wherein said profile data comprises, for each individual one of saiddevices, the unique identification code value that identifies saidindividual one of said devices and further comprises attribute data thatdescribes said individual one of said devices or one or more users ofeach of said individual one of said devices.
 6. Apparatus as set forthin claim 5 wherein said profile data further comprises, for eachindividual one of said devices, preference values which indicate thedesired characteristics of other ones of said devices as specified bythe profile data stored in said database for said other ones of saiddevices.
 7. Apparatus as set forth in claim 1 wherein said serverfurther includes means coupled to said message receiver for processingincoming proximity data in said notification messages identifying nearbydevices to create and store data in said database that indicatesinferred relationships between at least some of said devices or theirusers.
 8. Apparatus as set forth in claim 7 wherein said data thatindicates inferred relationships includes data identifying likelyfriends and acquaintances of users of said devices.
 9. Apparatus as setforth in claim 8 wherein said data that indicates inferred relationshipsis employed to establish a network of trust between devices or theirusers.
 10. Apparatus as set forth in claim 7 wherein said profile dataincludes list data which identifies devices owned by friends of theowner a specified device and wherein said means for processing incomingproximity data adds devices which are frequently near to said specifieddevice to said list data to create said inferred relationships. 11.Apparatus as set forth in claim 1 wherein said profile data includesdata describing the interests of the users of said devices. 12.Apparatus as set forth in claim 11 wherein said new alert messagecontains displayable data indicating common interests shared between theusers of said two nearby devices.
 13. Apparatus as set forth in claim 1wherein said profile data includes demographic or bibliographic datadescribing the users of said devices.
 14. Apparatus as set forth inclaim 1 wherein said server further includes means for accepting acommand from a user said given one of said electronic devices whichspecifies the predetermined threshold level that determines when alertmessages are sent to said given one of said electronic devices. 15.Apparatus as set forth in claim 1 wherein said new alert messagecontains image data representing a photograph or icon depicting saidother nearby device or the user of said other nearby device. 16.Apparatus as set forth in claim 1 wherein said alert message containsdisplayable data representing a photograph or icon depicting said othernearby device or the user of said other nearby device.
 17. Apparatus asset forth in claim 1 wherein said two nearby ones of said devices arecellular telephones and wherein said new alert message sent to one ofsaid two nearby devices contains the telephone number of the other ofsaid two nearby devices.
 18. Apparatus as set forth in claim 1 whereinsaid database for storing profile data includes data employed by anexisting Internet social networking service for matching the users ofthat service.
 19. Apparatus as set forth in claim 1 wherein saidapparatus further comprises a web server for accepting at least part ofsaid profile data submitted by users of said devices via the Internet.